


Good Things Come in Threes

by apparentlytaboo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, au harry potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, Deaf Clint Barton, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Phil Coulson, Sad and Happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 09:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19391191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparentlytaboo/pseuds/apparentlytaboo
Summary: "Clint, for one, had never quite been able to believe is luck eight years ago, when a hawk had invaded his family home and left them with, of all things, a letter."Hogwarts is back in session after the war and many students are returning to complete their education. Clint hasn't spoken to James since the war, and this reunion might be just the chance he needs to keep a promise to an old friend.





	Good Things Come in Threes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Hogwarts AU prompt from @mandatoryfunday on tumblr.
> 
> I am so sorry. I read the prompt and then this slowly evolved while I was stuck in traffic. Background major character death, mentions of past child abuse, mentions of HP canon-typical violence. Dealing with anxiety, PTSD and panic attacks. Sad/happy (sappy) ending. Please let me know in the comments if I missed anything I should put in a warning for.
> 
> *edited to correct a few typos and such.

It had been more than a year since the project to rebuild Hogwarts had begun. Sometimes, this felt like a small eternity to the students who had been displaced. At others, it felt like yesterday they had watched her fall violently into ruin. Still, the volunteer teams had made extraordinary progress; already the school was whole enough to host classes for the year and for many it felt like coming home.

Clint for one had never quite been able to believe his luck eight years ago, when a hawk had invaded his family home and left them with, of all things, a letter. Granted, the subsequent abuse from both Barney and his father hadn’t made the event seem like a blessing at the time, but it was the first best thing to have ever happened to him. Clint would trade a hundred broken bones for the new world he’d been given.

*

After the letter came his family had been terrified of what it would mean to have a ‘freak’ in their midst, Clint’s father and brother falling over themselves to blame his mother’s genes and influence. They had beaten him more severely than he could ever remember, past the point he’d broken down to beg (a small boy pleading for them to stop, so much blood in his burst eardrums that he couldn’t even hear his own words), and straight into a genuine fear that he wouldn’t survive. They hadn’t listened to those pleas either. Luckily an official came ‘round to follow up on the muggle-borns in the area (it happened rather often with muggle parents, that they simply ignored the letters), in time to stop them before they could finish the job. When an imposing man in black robes had swept into the room Clint assumed he was dead.

He dreamed of a strange man stopping time and carrying Clint through the fireplace to someplace else entirely. As it turned out, the man was not a dream, not death nor an angel, but a Professor; and Clint himself was still very much alive. Professor Coulson had filed paperwork with the ministry as soon as Clint was coherent enough to comprehend and sign it, and he’d become an orphan under the care of a boarding school.

The medical side of the magical world was extraordinary, but it wasn’t perfect. He’d been up and about in less than a week, but despite their best efforts Clint’s hearing never fully returned. His days were filled with lessons on sign language and well-meant efforts to ‘cheer up’ what they assumed would be an emotionally devastated child, but they needn’t have worried: as far as Clint was concerned, every moment he lived past when Coulson had rescued him was borrowed time, stolen from the hands of death itself.

To their dismay, his new lease on life had given him an unreasonable amount of energy and his efforts to relieve his boredom proved too much for the staff to handle (short of petrifying him, there wasn’t much they could do to keep Clint out of something he wanted in to), and Professor Coulson had been forced to take him to the school and introduce him to the small handful of other students who, for one reason or another, were under its guardianship.

Which is where the second best event of Clint’s life occurred; he met Natasha. She was Russian born and had sought asylum with the British ministry, which he’d thought was just about the coolest thing he’d ever heard until he finally found out the reason, years later (it turns out child trafficking and shadowy spy organizations were more than juicy stories in the media). To say they’d become fast friends would be an understatement; it was like finding a piece of his soul he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.

After that, being sorted into separate houses at the start of the year felt like a death sentence, but it wasn’t enough to keep them apart. Within a week they’d found a dozen of the castle’s lesser-known passageways and alcoves to hide away in. Evading Filtch and the Prefects was nothing more than a bonus game to their young minds.

Two months and they had a way into and out of the Hufflepuff common room, though Natasha preferred not to travel all the way up from the dungeons if Clint could meet her in the middle instead.

Sneaking around the grounds became a constant past time, neither child visible between classes and meals at all except for to those with the most discerning eye (you would never know it but Professor Coulson had been quite the mischievous student himself in his time, always searching for trouble with his friend Fury). During their early years they gained an intimate knowledge of the castle and, quite accidentally, an ear for information. Their favorite spots were often concealed near well-traveled areas, or just beyond what most people considered to be a ‘private’ area. Overhearing conversations that were never meant for their ears was just another game for the children.

Which is how they, and by extension Professor Coulson, had ended up so well informed about the nefarious plots that had riddled their school years.

**

Despite the rapid repairs, a large portion of the castle and surrounding grounds still held the scars of the battle. For most of the younger students, it was as surreal in the same way as touring a historical site; but most of the eighth years returning to finish their education had been a part of the events responsible for Hogwarts’ current state of ruin. It lent an extra air of the bizarre to the experience, having most of the student body walking around like tourists, talking about rumors and gossip from the war and trying to blend them together into a patchwork tapestry of the truth.

Clint’s peers drifted through the corridors likes shades by comparison, their empty gazes falling on well-remembered paths, the once-familiar landscape overlapped by a phantasmagoria of nightmarish memories.

Clint had developed a set of rules that, for the most part, kept his head above water and focused on schoolwork: he kept out of construction areas, avoided the spots imprinted with specific memories, stayed well away from where Professor Coulson… well. The entire corridor surrounding the late Professor’s rooms was a giant no-man’s land for Clint, and while circumventing it between classes had proved more than a little inconvenient, it wasn’t worth a repeat of the panic attack that had gripped him the last time he tried to venture through it.

Despite his best efforts, sometimes it wasn’t enough. A sight, a smell, a sound, was all it took to trigger a memory and then he’d be there reliving one of the worst moments of his life to date and wandering the castle on numb legs until he eventually ended up here; on the small balcony Nat had shown him for his birthday. It was little more than an outcropping of rock out of view of windows, in a deep shadow that was nearly impossible to see into. From here, Clint had an open vantage of a large portion of the castle and its surrounding grounds. It was his sanctuary; high above the world where no one else could touch him.

When the castle or the world or the press of humanity felt too much, Clint would come up here and sit watching the trees sway and pretending he could hear the wind whistling over the stones; he would imagining Natasha beside him, sitting in silence as they had so many times before. In this place steeped with fond memory, Clint could feel her punching his arm, taking his hand in hers and signing at him not to be a sissy. Telling him that he couldn’t change the past. That it had been worth it. That he shouldn’t be mourning something that was her choice, hers to give.

Clint sat until the sky greyed over, until the lights had gone from the windows and his bones felt as cold as the stones underneath him. As the stones leeched the last dregs of warmth from him, movement caught his eye on one of the lower towers.

Even from this distance the figure was familiar to him; Barnes had always been shorter than Clint, but even before the war he had cut an impressive figure, the kind that dominated a room just by stepping into it. It was a quality he had always admired. Or at least, he had told himself it was the presence he admired, not the man himself; but the fact was, whenever Barnes was in the room Clint had never been able to look anywhere else.

***

Barnes, childhood friend to Steven Rogers, had been a Gryffindor. Like Nat and himself, when Steve had gotten sorted into Hufflepuff they looked as though they’d lost a limb.

Steve was a tiny thing, but the man inside was something different altogether; always getting into trouble, always looking out for others. He had a heart of gold and Barnes had been looking out for him their whole lives.

Until they became housemates, and suddenly he became Clint’s problem.

Bucky and Steve were still nearly inseparable, but despite their best intentions there were moments when they simply had to be apart and the bullies in the school had a nose for it. He still remembers the first time he’d found Steve standing off between Goyle and an even tinier little scrap of a kid, their books spilled all over the corridor. Goyle got a single hit in before Clint’s vision went red, and he and his growth spurt went over to do something about it.

Needless to say, Clint got into (and often lost) quite a few fights because of Steve after that, but none more with Goyle (apparently Nat had had a ‘word’ with him) and slowly the four merged into a strange, multi-housed amoeba of friendship.

Mostly through Steve’s stories, he’d gotten to know “Bucky” Barnes, the real one hiding behind the tough guy façade and gruff one-word answers. Clint had fallen hook line and sinker, but he’d fought it. To say he was raised in a bigoted household would be an understatement. Being gay wouldn’t have gotten him beaten; he’s pretty sure it would have gotten him dead.

Predictably, Natasha figured him out and kindly ground some sense into him; if he didn’t have a problem with her Ravenclaw _girlfriend_ Maria Hill, he didn’t really have grounds to be upset with himself, did he?

It took all summer, but with Nat in his corner (grinding him down) he’d finally worked up the courage to say something to James. The problem was, when the school year started up and students started to arrive, Barnes didn’t. Nor did several other pureblood students from ‘Slytherin’ families who’d been sorted into a different house.

The rest of history speaks for itself. War broke out in the shadows. They became part of the backbone of the Order, Nat and Coulson using their house allegiance as cover to work their way into the Dark Lord’s good graces, Clint and a surprisingly capable older Steve as part of the DA. Even with their combined efforts they never did find Barnes. Not until it was too late.

Seeing a mangled Bucky show up on the other side of the Battle was the single biggest psychological victory the war had ever struck against their group.

He doesn’t know exactly what happened to the man while he the Death Eaters’ possession, but he knows enough. Even though he’d been under mind control, many members of the Wizengamot had wanted to try the ‘winter soldier’ for war crimes, and with Bucky’s memories of the events being shoddy at best, he couldn’t even defend himself.

In the end, it had been the information Nat had gathered, and given her life to liberate, that had ultimately saved him; but he got the feeling Bucky didn’t feel too lucky.

Even now, with most of his memory returned by his time in Saint Mungo’s, James looks lost. He looks the way Clint feels, he realizes, staring at the silhouette standing against the darkness. They haven’t spoken since returning here. To be honest, Clint hasn’t spoken to nearly anyone. Except for Steve, they’d all given up after his curt responses to their ‘condolences’ for his loss. Words feel empty. He feels empty.

But Barnes is looking at the world like a ghost; as though he doesn’t feel like he’s a part of it anymore, and for the first time Clint feels fleetingly like he might not be alone.

He stays in his nook, staring at James. James stays on the tower, staring at the world.

***

He doesn’t mean for it to become a ‘thing,’ but five nights out of seven find Clint wrapped up on his ledge, staking out the tower and waiting for Barnes to inevitably show. Sharing in each other’s silent vigil. He starts looking forward to these moments in the darkness, counting the daylit hours until he can slip away again.

***

One night after a particularly awful day, Clint is almost drifting off when he sees Barnes sink to his knees, his back to the parapet, and simply put his head in his hands. He watches in growing horror as his shoulders start to shake with tears, and Clint hadn’t thought he could feel any worse than he already did but his heart is squirming abysmally in his chest.

On some level it feels wrong, intruding on Bucky’s privacy like this, but leaving seems worse and the misery is stifling. Seeing his friend in pain and not being able to do anything about it hurts in ways Clint never would have expected.

The next night Clint avoids the rooftop altogether. He loses a night’s sleep staring at the ceiling and hating Barnes a little bit for ruining his safe spot. Then hates himself for even thinking it. At four o clock, sleep deprived and wrung out, his mind drums up a memory. Unsurprisingly, it is of Natasha; the summer after their fourth year, mucking about in the greenhouses back when she’d been painstakingly prying him out of the closet.

***

“You know he likes you back.”

“Nat, he doesn’t even talk to me. He doesn’t talk to anybody. And you can’t know that.”

“I absolutely can,” she sniffs, ignoring his eye-roll. “ _You_ won’t know one way or the other if you don’t say anything, stop being a child.”

“I am not being a child.” The clump of dirt she deftly dodges kind of makes him a liar. The much larger one she nails him in the head with makes her just as bad, but she’ll never admit it. “Look Nat, I don’t know if he even _likes_ me, let alone if he’s gay.” He gripes, swatting the crumbs out of his hair and hoping there weren’t any worms in it.

“The worst thing that’s going to happen is he says no.”

“He could kick my ass,” he tries, but he knows it’s a dud argument. She punches his arm, Natasha language for ‘your stupidity is trying my patience, cut it out.’

“Steve is gay. James’s fine with both Steve and his boyfriend Sam, and if anyone was going to get hit, it would have been him for daring to kiss ‘ _little Stevie’_.” She makes a face like the pet name is a bad taste she is spitting from her mouth.

He doesn’t have much to say to that, choosing instead to lob a pebble with unerring accuracy into the hood of her jacket. She rolls her eyes, “Just promise me you’ll talk to him, ok? That’s all.”

“Fine.” Another Punch, “Ow, what? I said fine!”

“Promise!” she growls, fist at the ready, and how such a small girl in such a non-physical society can hit so hard… She moves to strike again, and he caves, flinching.

“Promise! I promise! Jesus Nat.”

He wakes long before sunrise, still miserable and haunted by the pact he’d made.

***

The next night finds Clint curled up in the corner of Barnes’ parapet, back to the stones to avoid getting snuck up on, trying not to talk himself out of being here before James shows up. Because it’s weird, isn’t it? Hanging around the top of a tower with no reason to be here except to corner someone who is clearly coming here to be alone and the only way he could possibly know James was going to be here is if he was following him, or worse yet creepily watching him at night. _Which he was_. This is a terrible idea. But he’d promised.

He thinks of Natasha then; of other promises they’d made each other. Of the night that Coulson came back from an Order meeting looking like a ghost and telling a disbelieving Clint that she was gone. He’d wanted to blame Coulson, had told the man as much. He remembers the look on Coulson’s face as Clint stormed off, full of directionless anger. It was the last conversation they ever shared and suddenly it’s all too much.

Clint doesn’t realize he’s curled in on himself until a pair of boots appear just feet away from his own. He startles, exasperated that he managed to get snuck up on before the startle and the previous anxiety gang up to nearly tip him into a full-blown panic attack. He’s had enough of them now to recognize the start of a losing battle.

A heavy weight plunks down next to him, and he nearly jumps out of his skin, turning a startled gaze to catch Bucky’s profile as he arranges himself next to Clint on the stone. Their shoulders are not quite touching, but he’s close enough to feel the warmth radiating off of the other boy.

Clint doesn’t keep his promise that night, but he stays anyway, and so does James.

***

After that the pattern changes, and yet stays the same. Classes by day, homework by evening, and by the time the last rays of light have bled out of the sky he finds himself on a tower, surrounded by stones and stars and Bucky. The silences they share aren’t warm but they’re companionable, tainted with a bone-deep understanding that doesn’t need to be voiced. It is a silence that clearly states, ‘you don’t have to say it. I understand.’

***

The parchment takes him by surprise. Bucky’d gone through the trouble of learning sign language back when Nat was teaching Steve, and Clint’s not half bad at reading lips considering he practices all day long in class. But there it is, sitting on the parapet between them one evening. When he turns to Bucky with a quirked eyebrow, he just motions to the parchment, crossing his arms and turning back to the nighttime view.

Clint eyes him for a minute but he has no idea what’s got Bucky so tense, not until he leans over to read the single line of script, the fresh ink still shiny in the moonlight.

‘I remember everything.’

The words hit Clint like a physical blow. He’s heard rumors about the things the Death Eaters used their soldiers for. They had adopted the same sick sense of humor that possessed their master, sending their pawns to murder family and friends, torture their loved ones. They’d ensure that the last thing either party saw was a son or daughter draining the life away from them. The story from Saint Mungo’s had been of victims regaining ‘partial memory,’ and for the most part society had considered that a blessing.

For James to remember _two years_ of pain and fear and helplessness… He didn’t know what to say. It didn’t look like Bucky expected him to say anything, reaching over to push the parchment over the edge and with a mutter it was set aflame; nothing but ashes scattering in the growing wind.

He watches until the last traces of soot have vanished.

“I dream about her.” The vibration of his voice startles him as much as the sound startles Bucky, both jumping at the abrupt break in the silence. He can feel the other’s surprised stare, but he isn’t quite ready to meet his eyes. “I dream that they’re both alive and I wake up every day and have to remember that they’re gone. It feels like losing them all over again.”

Bucky says nothing, just takes a small step sideways, bringing their shoulders close enough to touch. Clint leans into him, staring out into the darkness and feeling the warmth from Bucky bleed over into his chest and start diffusing some of the numbness.

***

Weeks later, he’s studying in the eighth year common room (the returning students had not rejoined their houses, instead living in a common area in one of the towers), across the table from James. “Where do you sneak off to every night?” Clint tries not to stare too openly at Steve where he’s appeared, looming over Bucky’s shoulder. He’s been hunched over a pile of parchment with a quill poised, but it’s been obvious he hasn’t been getting anything done. Apparently, the listlessness had invited one of Steve’s campaign speeches on ‘seeking healing through the help of others.’ It’s a bad speech. Clint’s been on the receiving end a few times himself now, and he knows how infuriating it can be.

“Look, Bucky, I get it. You don’t want to talk to me. But you’ve got to talk to someone, you can’t just go around giving the world the silent treatment forever.” Bucky raises his eye’s to Steve’s, stares, and Clint watches in horror as the blonde’s final thread of patience snaps. “Damnit Bucky!” he shouts loud enough for Clint to _hear_ him, possibly from across the room, “Talk to me!” and when his hand slaps down on the table hard enough to rattle the ink pots, they both jump.

The entire common room is eerily still, every pair of eyes trained on their table, on Steve, on Bucky. Clint can see the panic filling up in his eyes, threatening to drown him, and Clint can see where this is going. Regret takes hold of Steve almost immediately, but Bucky’s already out of his chair and heading for the door, dodging Steve’s attempt to catch his arm.

Clint jumps up before Steve can storm out after him, pressing a hand to the shorter man’s chest. “Clint,” he tries to dodge around him but Clint’s having none of it; he pushes him back into the vacant chair with a hand on his shoulder and waits for him to calm down before removing it. When he has Steve’s less frantic attention he sighs. “I know where he is. I’ve got him. Stay here.”

His face is a battle between surprise and hurt, but he lets Clint go jogging out the common room door and down the hall. He just hopes that he’s right about the destination.

***

The sun is just starting to set behind the forest when he catches up, and it’s the first time Clint’s been on the tower in the daylight. The scene is beautiful but it’s Bucky, fists clenched in his pockets and eyes screwed shut to hold back tears, that takes Clint’s breath away.

Before he can thing about what he’s doing, he crosses the stone in three long strides, right into Bucky’s personal space. He pauses with his hands hovering just above the other man’s shoulders, inches away but not quite touching. He bites his lip, waiting for Bucky to either deck him or hug him, and when James leans forward to bury his face in the front of Clint’s robes he wraps him up and holds on tight.

The light’s completely gone from the sky by the time James takes a step back, gently pulling out of his arms to wipe at his face. His cheeks are red in unwarranted embarrassment, and Clint feels himself smiling at the absurdity of it all. Bucky has no reason to feel bad; he’d trade much more than stiff muscles and a soiled robe to make him feel better.

The realization startles Clint but it shouldn’t. He’s known for years that’s there is very little he wouldn’t do for Bucky Barnes, after all. Clint’s still holding the other man’s arms gently, and he uses their closeness to take stock. His eyes are red-rimmed, face still streaked with tears, but perfectly calm all traces of the previous panic tamped back down and Clint marvels at the strength it must take to hold himself together as well as Bucky does. In Clint’s opinion, if the silent treatment’s the worst of Bucky’s behaviors he’s doing all right, and for a moment he’s annoyed that Steve can’t see that too.

The world’s been giving Clint the silent treatment for years, you don’t see Steve giving _it_ a pep talk.

He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until Bucky actually…. laughs. It’s loud, loud enough that Clint can hear it faintly, and almost certainly a little bit hysterical. But it’s there, transforming James’s face in ways Clint hasn’t seen since before the war. He’s broken, but it only makes him look more beautiful.

If you spread Clint’s life out in a series of moments and asked him to pick the best one for his first kiss, this wouldn’t be it. It’s not at the _bottom_ of the list exactly, but it certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near the top. His lips are chapped. The front of his robes are wet and probably snotty. He’s pretty sure the last thing he ate was a bag of jalapeno flavored crisps.

Despite the evidence that it should be a disaster, the kiss is kind of perfect.

James’s lips are soft, his chin is rough from stubble that hasn’t been shaved since this morning, and he hasn’t pulled away. Clint pulls back after a chaste press of lips, but he doesn’t get far before Bucky’s hand is fisted in his collar, dragging him back down and pressing their mouths together with purpose. He reaches up to cup James’s face, wiping away the last remains of his tears and leaning down into him, tangling his hands in wild hair as Bucky pulls him even closer, wraps an arm around his back.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there. Eventually Bucky pushes him back against the parapet and all but melts against him. Clint just wraps his arms around him and holds him up. He looks down when one of his hands is tugged free from its hold on Bucky, raises his eyebrows in question when he lays Clint’s palm over his hand and starts to sign.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

“I know.” And he does. Someday maybe he’ll be able to, but he isn’t ready yet and neither is James.

‘Steve doesn’t.’ Got him there.

“I know.”

‘It’s easier to not actually _talk_.’ And yea, Clint gets that too.

“I’m a pretty good listener.” He deadpans. The second laugh is even better than the first.

His mother had told him once that all good things come in threes. Clint had automatically assumed that was three too many ‘good’ things for him to scrape together in a lifetime, but then he’d gotten a new life. And for a while, he’d had Natasha and he wouldn’t trade their time together for the world. And now… He and James aren’t perfect. Hell, they’re not even _ok_. But they’re not alone; and that’s got to be one of the best things that’s ever happened to him.


End file.
